Obama's new climate change rules will create 'an unnecessary hurdle' for global development work – including fight against Ebola, warns CDC official

• US president warned that global warming impacts 'threaten to roll back decades of progress' in America's international outreach
• An executive order he signed Tuesday will force federal agencies to factor in how their efforts will affect – and be affected by – climate change
• A CDC official told MailOnline that the measure will be 'an unnecessary hurdle' when the agency has to spring into action
• The CDC has sent more than 100 personnel to west Africa to fight an Ebola virus epidemic and the Pentagon has dispatched 3,000 troops
• The White House didn't mention Ebola in material distributed to reporters but identified 'fighting malaria' as an example of affected programs 

By David Martosko, Us Political Editor for MailOnline

Published: 12:59 EST, 23 September 2014 | Updated: 03:33 EST, 24 September 2014

President Barack Obama announced an executive order covering 'climate-resilient international development' on Tuesday that will force federal agencies to consider the global-warming impact of international development work, including overseas programs that fight diseases like the Ebola virus.

Speaking of climate change during a speech at the United Nations on Tuesday, Obama warned that the world must 'tackle this global threat before it is too late.'

The White House cited 'fighting malaria' as one example of an initiative that it aims to bring into sync with its position that global climate change is both real and caused by human activity.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention typically engages in such epidemic-related work. It has already deployed more than 100 relief workers to Liberia and Sierra Leone.

But Obama's new order will necessarily mean that the CDC and other agencies in his administration will have what one insider called 'an unnecessary hurdle' to leap over when emergencies normally lead to urgency.

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President Barack Obama spoke at the United Nations Climate Summit on Tuesday, spelling out a new executive order that critics say will make it harder to fight diseases and engage in other relief work overseas

The CDC estimated Tuesday that the current Ebola outbreak could affect 1.4 million people by the end of January 2015.

An official with that agency told MailOnline that she is 'concerned' about the president's order, but 'of course we'll comply. I hope this impacts long-term planning more than emergencies.'

Obama's executive order specifically refers to 'agency strategies, planning, programs, projects, investments, overseas facilities, and related funding decisions,' broad categories that could impact even last-minute decisions like those related to the African Ebola outbreak.

The CDC official noted also that the order doesn't appear to impact any of the CDC's operations inside the United States. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. 

The text of Obama's executive order, and his United Nations speech Tuesday in New York, indicate that he and his advisers have accepted some of the most apocalyptic predictions of environmental advocates.

'The adverse impacts of climate change, including sea-level rise, increases in temperatures, more frequent extreme precipitation and heat events, more severe droughts, and increased wildfire activity, along with other impacts of greenhouse gas emissions, such as ocean acidification, threaten to roll back decades of progress in reducing poverty and improving economic growth in vulnerable countries,' the order reads in part.

He told the UN that the world will soon be subject to 'more extreme weather events' that will bring 'impacts that we can unfortunately no longer avoid.'

'In America the last decade has been our hottest on record,' he claimed, while taking credit for doing 'more than any other nation on earth' to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But we have to do more.'

President Barack Obama says alarms ringing over climate change

Impact: A CDC official, the agency currently leading the fight against Ebola in Africa, told MailOnline that she was 'concerned' about the new orders. She added: 'Of course we'll comply. I hope this impacts long-term planning more than emergencies'

'In our west, wildfire season stretches most of the year.' he said.

Moments later Obama blamed climate change for making U.S. farmland both 'drenched' with too much rain and left in 'drought' by too little.

'The alarm bells keep ringing,' he said. 'Our citizens keep marching.'

Obama acknowledged that other nations' slow responses – when they respond at all – to America's urging on carbon emissions is rooted in the fear that industrial costs will spiral and change bottom-line business viability.

Obama acknowledged a global 'suspicion that if we act and other countries don't, we will be at an economic disadvantage.'

'None of this is without controversies,' he said, but 'every country must play its part.'

Internationally, he said the United States would begin considering how global warming will impact its relief and development efforts before putting them into action.

'Development investments in areas as diverse as eradicating malaria, building hydropower facilities, improving agricultural yields, and developing transportation systems,' said an information sheet provided by the White House, 'will not be effective in the long term if they do not account for impacts such as shifting ranges of disease-carrying mosquitoes, changing water availability, or rising sea levels.'

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